Nashville Predators lock up first Presidents' Trophy in franchise history

The Preds will finish 2017-2018 as the NHL's top regular-season team

The Predators locked up the honor as the NHL's top regular-season team on Thursday night. After Nashville's victory over the Capitals earlier in the night, the Boston Bruins' 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers guaranteed the Preds would finish the season with the most points.

Predators players and staff members stuck around the arena following their win in order to catch the end of the Boston-Florida game. When the result landed in their favor, they didn't exactly go wild in the locker room.

Quite the scene in #Preds locker room as players gather around phone to watch end of Bruins-Panthers.

Handshakes and high-fives ... that's the good stuff. Again, not a raucous celebration, but Nashville players seem to realize that the Presidents' Trophy doesn't guarantee postseason success. Preds forward Filip Forsberg reminded everyone of this by twisting the knife in the hearts of Capitals fans.

Filip Forsberg On #Preds winning Presidents’ Trophy: “we’ve seen especially here (in Washington) that the Trophy doesn’t mean that much, but I think just the home ice is going to be huge.”

Washington won the trophy in each of the prior two seasons but failed to make it out of the second round in both playoff runs. The last team to finish as the regular season's top team and go on to win the Stanley Cup was the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013.

But while Stanley Cup remains the ultimate goal for Nashville, winning the Presidents' Trophy is still a proud and commendable accomplishment -- especially considering it's the first time in franchise history that they've earned the honor. It's also their first division title in franchise history.

A year ago, Nashville earned 94 regular-season points and entered the postseason as an eight seed before going to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Penguins in six games. This year, the reigning Western Conference champs built off that Cinderella run by picking up 115 points (with one game left to play) and will carry home-ice advantage throughout their playoff run this year.

That's great news for Nashville, not such great news for catfish.

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Pete Blackburn is from Boston, so there's a good chance you don't like him already. He has been a writer at CBS Sports since 2017 and usually aims to take a humorous and light-hearted approach to the often...
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